Search for the Clanlord
by KuzAnn
Summary: Raelag has gone missing and it's up to Zehir and Isabel to find where he's been taken and rescue him before it's too late.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: The Game  
**

_ The dice fell, their twin pair of twenty sides gleaming in the fragile light of the otherwise dark space. Together they pattered across a table painted with a map of the planet Ashan, a likeness which was so exact as to be beyond the talent of what any artist could ever achieve. Entities watched closely as the pieces slowed in their tumble, some with eagerness, others with a sense of dread. Finally the dice came to a halt, the red showing fifteen, and the purple two._

_ A purple scaled fist slammed down on the table in frustration as the player glared at her challenger. "My best piece! Of all the rotten luck!" she snarled._

_ "Awww, don't you think it's fair for me to get a chance to take him back?" the challenger asked, his playful tone spoiled by his coarse, grating voice. The challenger smouldered at his corner of the table, his toothy mouth grinning at her in a distinctly unnerving fashion as he chuckled at his victory._

_ "Fine. I hope he causes you no end in grief," the purple player flicked the Game piece in question over to her challenger's side of the table, and it was snatched up by a dark red-scaled hand that trailed dirty black smoke as it moved. _

_ He held it in his hand for a few seconds, staring down at the features carved upon the Game piece; a lean dark elf with black hair falling down to his shoulders, dressed in a long coat in the style that most warlocks of his race wore, with four curved daggers strapped to his belt and carrying a long staff which aided him in his spellwork. Without another word he placed the piece within his territory, meaning that the person it was linked to had been taken prisoner by the winner's faction..._

* * *

Raelag had barely had time to move before the demons swept into his campsite like a seething, ugly red wave. They had caught him as he was traveling alone in his study of the Dragon Knights, and it was one versus an entire army of demons as it stood now. Horned faces leered at him from all sides as their leader made his way through their ranks; Veyer the Demon Lord set his ax tip in the dirt and crossed his arms over his wide chest. Though he couldn't make out the face behind the demon lord's helmet, Raelag could tell that his old rival was grinning maliciously down at him as he stood there.

"Looks like you're out of options this time, Raelag," Veyer sneered, clearly enjoying this first victory over his old enemy. The demon picked his ax up again and sauntered towards Raelag, who was doubtless trying to find a way out of this difficult situation. Veyer stopped once he was directly in front of Raelag, the demon lord practically shivering with excitement at having been able to defeat the dark elf as swiftly as he had.

Of course, Raelag would not give himself up without a fight. The warlock summoned a meteor shower on top of the thinnest group of encircling demons, then darted through the ensuing death and confusion in order to make his escape. But Veyer was not to be denied his victory after coming this close and the demon lord bolted after him, dodging chunks of flaming rock and shoving aside any underlings that were unlucky enough to get in his way. He spotted Raelag after emerging from the dust and melee and closed in on the dark elf in a few massive strides, swinging his battle ax so as to bash Raelag in the head with the flat of its blade. It was a wild swing and Veyer half expected it to miss, but it seemed that luck was on his side that day.

The flat of Veyer's ax caught Raelag on the right side of his head, and he was briefly knocked off-balance but quickly recovered and continued to run. He only managed to move a few feet further before the blow caught up with him, and Raelag slumped against a nearby rock as blood from his head wound began to flow down his face and neck, staining the fabric of his collar dark red as it soaked into it. Veyer had held back enough to ensure that the blow had not been enough to kill, but it had been just enough to keep Raelag from escaping and to prevent any further struggle.

Raelag wondered if anyone would be able to find him as his vision blurred and darkened. He had been traveling alone, and no one but Isabel had even the faintest idea as to where he was at this moment, let alone wherever the demons would take him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: To the Empire**

Zehir looked up from his desk at the sound of one of his assistants entering his private study. He was tending to the copious amounts of paperwork that every leader was forced to deal with, which he had fallen behind with due to various reasons, one being that he simply kept putting it off because it was the most incredibly boring thing that he had been forced to do in his life.

"A letter for you, First of the Circle," the assistant said, holding a carefully folded and sealed letter to Zehir. The young wizard accepted the letter with a brief thank you—he still didn't delight in being called First of the Circle rather than Zehir, but he kept those protests to himself these days—and turned it over so that the seal was plainly visible. The wax used for the seal was blue and the pattern itself was that of an apple blossom; Lady Isabel's personal symbol. Zehir broke the seal and unfolded the letter, his expression darkening somewhat as he read its contents.

After finishing with the letter, Zehir pushed his chair back and got up from his desk, intending to make travel arrangements to the Unicorn Empire as soon as possible. Narxes appeared before the young mage so suddenly that Zehir nearly walked into his old mentor.

"Is the paperwork done, Lord Zehir?" Narxes asked politely.

"No, I just—" Zehir began, but Narxes cut him off.

"You know that procrastinating on these things doesn't help," the older wizard said.

"I know, I was just—" Zehir tried again, only to be talked over by Narxes a second time.

"Perhaps it's time to get a secretary, as I suggested?" Narxes continued to nag.

Zehir sighed and rolled his eyes, then gave Isabel's letter to Narxes. "Something's amiss, can't I take the paperwork with me or something?" Zehir asked.

Narxes finished the letter and returned it to his ruler, then nodded. "That's not a bad idea, actually... I have something that would help," he said, stroking his thick gray-streaked beard.

"Fine, as long as it doesn't make me stupider in order to use it," Zehir said, referring to a conflict a few years ago in which he had sacrificed parts of his knowledge in order to summon troops direct from the Silver Cities, as well as an entire town. Having backup had been nice, but the whole thing bothered Zehir immensely because it required him to sacrifice parts of himself, as well as the fact that the summoning itself was horribly painful and left him with a splitting headache for the rest of the day after using it.

"No no, just a bit of your mana will get it to work," Narxes said. "I'll go get it. You make your travel arrangements," the older wizard strode off in a whirl of fine orange fabric.

* * *

Little over a day later, Zehir was packed and ready to go, with a few soldiers and guards to take with him for protection. Narxes' device—an enchanted box large enough to hold a sizable stack of papers inside it—was tucked safely away in a trunk and would be ready and waiting with his first batch of paperwork once Zehir stopped and made camp that evening. There were few people to see him off, just Narxes and a few of the Circle, since Zehir didn't want to make a big deal out of visiting the Empire.

Zehir gave the tiny group a short wave of farewell and set off, his small army of golems, gremlins, and archmagi in tow. As to be expected, the day's trek through the desert was hot and dusty, and that night the group set up camp around a small outcropping of stone that jutted above the ever-shifting dunes of the wizards' territory.

After ensuring that his soldiers had everything they needed for the night, Zehir entered his tent and sat down at the fold-able table that would serve as his desk during his travels. Narxes' enchanted box sat in the center of his desk, promising a few hours of paper-related boredom on top of a long day's march. Zehir grimaced, rubbing a hand over his face, then pulled the box over and opened the lid. He found a large, neat stack of paper with a note from Narxes on top requesting that he get the whole stack done in one sitting. The young wizard set the note aside and picked up the first paper on the stack, tonight would be a long night indeed.

* * *

The next morning the group rose and broke camp in relative silence. Once his personal items and saddle were set for the day's march, Zehir gave his elephant a pat on the trunk and walked back to the middle of the camp to see if there was anything else that needed doing. Unlike many of his equals, Zehir wasn't so proud that he would laze about while his lessers finished their work, plus time-wise it made more sense to help out and get things moving faster. With Zehir's assistance the supplies were reloaded in half the time it usually took and the group was on its way, carefully navigating around treacherously steep sand dunes as they traveled towards the border of the Unicorn Empire.

Around midday a commotion near the end of the caravan drew Zehir's attention, and after telling his elephant to stay at the head of the line he dashed back to see what was amiss. One of the spelled hover carts had come too close to the edge of a dune and almost fell down the steep expanse of sand, and though the animal that pulled it was spooked but uninjured and the cart undamaged, part of its cargo had come loose and fallen all the way to the foot of the dune. Two gremlins were already surveying the damage; three large ceramic jars lay in pieces between them, their contents soaking rapidly into the sand.

Zehir carefully made his way down the face of the dune, half jogging, half sliding in the loose sand, and hurried over to where the gremlins stood. "What did we lose?" he asked.

One of the gremlins looked down and scuffed a booted foot in the sand; judging by his present manner, he was the one at fault for the accident. "We lost three containers of joint cleaner, sir," he said meekly.

"Ah," Zehir said, not even pausing to berate the gremlin on his clumsiness but instead turning immediately to making plans around this loss. Joint cleaner was important to wizards traveling through desert terrain as it kept their golems' joints free of sand and lowered the risk of the constructs seizing up at the most inopportune moments during a battle. It was also essential to keeping them running smoothly as they marched through the dunes, and losing so much of the cleaner meant that they would need to buy or make more, or simply accept the fact that they would have to start abandoning golems to the all-consuming desert sands. Without another word the young wizard turned and started back towards the small army, teleporting himself from the base of the dune to the top instead of making the exhausting climb by foot.

"He wasn't even mad..." the gremlin who had spoken up said, looking from the spilled cleaner to Zehir and then back again. "Cyrus would've thrown a fit and had me punished..." The other gremlin merely shrugged at the comment, then made his way to the base of the dune and began to climb, the first following close behind.

Zehir was pouring over a map with one of the archmagi in his service when the gremlin approached him again. "Sir? A word?" he asked.

"Hmm?" Zehir said, pausing in his discussion to look around at human head level before realizing where the voice came from and looking down at the small reptilian humanoid. "Yes?" he asked, with surprising patience considering the present circumstances.

The gremlin got straight to the point, "There's a fairly well-populated outpost at the Tajra Oasis northeast of here where we could restock on joint cleaner. It's a bit out of the way if we're trying to get to the Empire as quickly as possible, but we'll be able to reach it on the amount of cleaner that we have right now." He gestured to a map that Zehir had tucked under his arm, and the young wizard immediately spotted the mark for the oasis upon opening the other chart.

"So we can," Zehir said, noting that the gremlin was telling the truth when he said that they would be able to reach the oasis with their present supply levels.

"But sir, that detour would set us back a week at best," the archmage that Zehir had been speaking with said, eying the gremlin with no small amount of disdain; he was one of the wizards who was of the opinion that the servant creatures of the Silver Cities were too far below them to consider listening to.

"True, but I don't like the idea of losing golems just to get there more quickly. We might need them," Zehir replied, still looking at the map with the Tajra Oasis marked on it.

"With all due respect, I doubt we'll need them during times like this," the archmage said. "It's been over a year since the last conflict and there has been no real news of any trouble thus far."

"Yes, but I still keep with the belief that it's best to be prepared, even when you don't expect trouble," Zehir quipped as he rolled up the chart. "You never know when something nasty might pop up and surprise you, eh?" he said, smiling and playfully prodding the archmage with the rolled up map. The smile dropped off Zehir's face when the other wizard's expression didn't change and the archmage walked off without another word. He was about to walk back to the front of the line when he stopped himself in mid-step and turned back to the gremlin. "By the way, what's your name?" he asked.

"Grittchit, sir," the gremlin replied. "Why do you ask?"

Zehir shrugged, "It would be kind of awkward if I were to just call you "gremlin," wouldn't it?" He waved the map and smiled slightly, "Thank you Grittchit, for helping to fix the problem."

Grittchit gave a short bow in return. "My pleasure, sir," he said.

"And by the way," Zehir said, leaning a bit closer. "You should probably avoid driving for a while, let someone else do it."

"Ah, right," Grittchit said, looking down in embarrassment; his clumsy driving had made it necessary to take this detour in the first place.

Soon the party was on the move again, now with a slightly altered course that would take them to the Tajra Oasis and eventually Griffin Pass, one of the smaller entrances to the Unicorn Empire.

* * *

Three days later the tired, dusty group arrived at the Tajra Oasis. The setting sun painted the desert fiery gold as it sank, and Zehir was glad that the group had been able to make it before dark. They had barely made it on the joint cleaner that they had left, having run out completely that very morning. Luckily they were now moving across the grass-covered ground of the oasis, which meant that the golems were no longer at risk of seizing up from too much sand getting in their joints.

The oasis itself was shaped like a huge bowl—its lowest point set deep enough to reach the desert water table and provide a reasonable amount of water for the residents there—and located within a massive ring of tall, rocky ridges that were the same orange-tan as the bedrock beneath most of the desert. The location sheltered the lush landscape from the moisture-scouring fury of the desert winds, allowing a good-sized lake to form at its center and for seeds blown in from more fertile lands to take root and grow. The small community that had also taken root here thrived on trade that flowed through the oasis by selling needed goods to travelers and offering a safe place to rest, as well as a few other services offered by some of the more odd residents of the oasis. A small war machine factory offered ammo carts, ballistae, and first aid tents to whoever wished to purchase them; a martello tower where the local law enforcement resided, which was also a place where visitors could learn a thing or two on the art of defense; a hill fort where the training master could help improve an army's troops in exchange for a payment in gold; a refugee camp; a crystal of knowledge; a well-kept planetarium; and, strangely enough, an elemental conflux. The factory, hill fort, and refugee camp were all owned by humans who had come to live here during the conflicts that had consumed the Griffin Empire just before it became the Unicorn Empire. The rest were owned and tended by wizards, former residents of the Silver Cities, who had decided that the quieter country life better suited their needs or personalities.

Zehir was itching to have a chat with the wizard who had helped to install the elemental conflux, being a summoner himself, but that would have to wait for later; first he needed to restock on joint cleaner and other supplies. It would be no use looking for those services now that night was closing in, so Zehir ordered that they set up camp in a grassy clearing, one of several that was reserved for visiting armies. The young wizard sat down at his makeshift desk as he had all the previous evenings and pulled Narxes' box toward him; tonight would be another long night.

It was around midday when Zehir entered the local inn—named the Three Palms for the three massive palm trees that grew in its front yard—for a rest and a cool drink. He had spent the first half of the day purchasing supplies and placing an order with the local alchemist for more joint cleaner, and was ready to take a break. The crowd of clientele in the tavern was surprisingly light, mostly made up of locals who'd come to have a cool drink while the sun was at its highest and most piercing over the oasis. Zehir walked over to the bar and seated himself on one of the stools, giving a tired-looking guard a polite nod when the man raised his mug at him in greeting.

"G'day sir," the barkeep said as he reached Zehir's place at the bar. "Unfortunately we've only got a few of the local brews and some date juice at the moment. What'll ya have?"

"Some of the date juice, please," Zehir replied. The barkeeper turned away to fetch Zehir's drink, and the wizard looked to his right when the guard he'd nodded to earlier gave a humorless chuckle.

"There was a time when this tavern could stock some of the most exotic drinks in Ashan," the man said, swirling the dregs of his beer at the bottom of his mug. "I take it you're a wizard since you didn't order any alcohol."

"Correct," Zehir replied, though the man could have easily deducted that from Zehir's wardrobe and the fact that he carried a clearly visible wand tucked into his sash. "Why is it that this tavern can't be stocked the way it used to?" he asked, changing the subject; some men tended to think of Zehir as a weakling for not drinking alcohol, though in truth it was because a drunk wizard was an extremely dangerous wizard, both to himself or to those surrounding him. Any smart man would quickly realize that while a regular drunk might just tip over a few tables and break a chair or two, a drunk who was also a _wizard_ could very easily burn the entire tavern down by accident; Zehir didn't want to bother finding out whether this man was one of the smarter ones.

The guard sighed and set his mug aside as he turned towards Zehir. "Griffin Pass has been closed up for nearly a month now, the place is currently occupied by a huge gallant of griffins, and they won't let anyone in or out of the Empire," the man paused and nodded his thanks to the barkeeper as he pushed a fresh mug to him across the counter, having already set Zehir's drink down next to the young wizard. "Add to that the recent dark elf raids and mummy problem, and suddenly a lot of our usual customers stopped passing through here." The man picked up the fresh mug and took a long drink, then continued after he set the mug down again, "As you can imagine, guarding the oasis has gotten harder as well, with the bandits and undead harrying us. People have started going missing."

It seemed that the guard would say no more, so Zehir left the man to his beer while he quietly sipped his own drink, thinking. Without the letter that Zehir had received from Isabel, the trouble with the dark elves might seem like an unfortunate encounter with a rebellious clan that would eventually be cleaned up by the rest of dark elf society, but with Isabel's information... The dark elves seemed to be testing their limits now that their clanlord had gone missing, and they didn't care whose toes they stepped on while experimenting with their new-found freedom. Zehir rested his elbow on the counter and quietly drummed his fingers on the hard surface. This could become a big problem for all the kingdoms involved, and especially for this small desert community that relied so heavily on foreign trade for its residents to make a living. He looked up as a thought occurred to him, and waved the barkeeper over. "Hasn't the Unicorn Empire sent troops out here to deal with the griffins and the bandit problem?" he asked.

"From what I hear, the necromancers of Heresh are mobilizing near the border of the Unicorn Empire, so most of the army is stationed there. Already had a few skirmishes, even," the barkeeper replied, picking up Zehir's empty glass so he could wash it. "Unfortunately we're not all that important when there's an army of undead sitting right next door. I'm just hoping we'll get some help as soon as possible, can't blame them for wanting to focus on the undead with how bold they've been getting lately."

Zehir thanked the barkeeper for the information and left his payment on the bar as he left the tavern. The sun had passed its zenith and was now beginning its descent towards the western ridge of the oasis as the afternoon wore on. Zehir was halfway to his camp site when the guard from the tavern caught up with him.

"The name's Jonathan, by the way," the guard said as he matched Zehir's stride.

"Pleased to meet you," Zehir replied. "I'm Zehir, First of the Circle. Please just call me Zehir."

"So what brings you here, Zehir?" Jonathan asked. Zehir appreciated that the man didn't bother with the official titles, though he figured that was in part due to the oasis' separation from any particular nation.

"I was on my way to visit a friend in the Unicorn Empire, but it seems that I won't be able to get through this way since those griffins you mentioned are camping out there," Zehir replied, seeing no reason to keep his general mission a secret; as long as he didn't pass on any information that would panic the residents or put Isabel in danger, the wizard was free to speak as he pleased on the matter.

Jonathan nodded. "Those griffins are supposed to be commanded by Lady Irina, but apparently she's vanished. Her griffins have been guarding and blocking the pass ever since," he said, gesturing towards the pass in the north with a nod of his head. In the light of early afternoon, it was easier to make out Jonathan's features than it had been in the gentler light of the tavern. The man was middle-aged, lean and well muscled from work as a guardian of the oasis. He wore his chain mail shirt and tough leather trousers easily, even in this heat, and it looked like he'd taken the rest of his armor off at the tower and had left what he was wearing on in case something happened during his time off-duty. The guard had no beard, and his light brown hair was cropped short, close to his head in order to make more comfortable to wear a helmet and to reduce the chance of an enemy seizing him by the hair. His eyes were hazel, set beneath two thick brown brows and framed by dark circles; work had kept him going beyond usual hours, in all likelihood, and the bags were a result of too many late nights. A thrice-broken nose suggested that things got much rougher than what the current peaceful state of the oasis conveyed, and the mouth beneath it, thin-lipped, slightly chapped and set in a grim line, told Zehir that things had been fairly hard here lately as well. All in all, Jonathan seemed like your average guard, strong and dedicated to keeping his people safe, and it was clear that he wanted something from Zehir.

The young wizard's assessment of Jonathan only took a few seconds, and after finishing he allowed his eyes to drift back to the terrain directly ahead of them. "So what is it that you want, Jonathan?" Zehir asked politely after a few moments of relative silence.

Zehir noticed the brief smile that crossed Jonathan's face before the man replied. "Right to the point. That's refreshing," he said, his mild voice sincere. "As I mentioned earlier back at the bar, people have been going missing lately. The latest is a young girl who was wandering near the northern entrance to the oasis when she disappeared."

"And you'd like me to help you look for her, right?" Zehir guessed as they reached the central lake of Tajra Oasis.

"That's right," Jonathan said, nodding again. "It would be a big help if you would assist us, we're stretched pretty thin as it is, with all the bandit trouble we've been having recently."

"I'll help," Zehir said. "My soldiers will probably enjoy another day here rather than having to trek through endless dunes." As Zehir finished his sentence, he noticed an old wizard—one of the residents of the oasis—making his way towards the pair as quickly as possible.

"Jonathan," he said, before bracing his hands against his knees and catching his breath. Jonathan and Zehir stopped, both waiting patiently for what the old man had to say. The wizard looked up at them again once he was finished, and said, "A massive sand storm has moved onto the Al-Safir route, and there's a freak blizzard that just closed up Whitewing Pass." Whitewing Pass was the original entrance to the Empire that Zehir had been traveling towards, one of the nation's largest. It was set in a tall mountain ridge, but it wasn't so high up that it would attract a lot of snow, especially around this time of year, so there was good reason to call it a freak storm. A sand storm blocking the Al-Safir route meant that Zehir was stuck at the Tajra Oasis and was faced with two options: wait for one of the storms to dissipate, or try to resolve things at Griffin Pass.

"Thanks Korjev," Jonathan said, clapping the old man on the back and passing him a few coins. "Grab yourself a drink at the Three Palms, you earned it. I'll get the warning out once I've finished my chat."

"Right, make sure everyone knows," Korjev said weakly; the rush to tell one of the guards had apparently taken a lot out of the old man, and he started to walk slowly towards the tavern as the pair continued their walk towards Zehir's camp.

"Well, seems that I'll be doing a lot more than finding a missing girl," Zehir said, once they had started walking again. "We're stuck until either a storm lets up, or the griffins do."

"We'd be much obliged if you would," Jonathan said, a genuine smile appearing on his face. "If you're willing, that is."

Zehir gave a short laugh. "If there's one thing I hate, it's having nothing to do," he said, grinning. A voice at the back of his mind briefly nagged him that he still had a lot of paperwork to do, but he shoved it down; surely Narxes would forgive him for helping these people instead of ignoring them and doing paperwork instead.

* * *

The search party set out that same afternoon, made up of five Tajra guards, including Jonathan, a few troops from Zehir's army, and Zehir himself. Zehir planned to scry for the girl first, hoping that whoever had her—since Jonathan was certain that someone had kidnapped her—would not have thought to put anti-seeing magics on their prisoner. In his hands Zehir held a small round mirror that he favored for scrying, and a strand of the girl's hair, provided by the worried mother and needed in order to help him focus on her location. The wizard closed his eyes, calmed himself, and let his magic flow over the mirror, only looking down at it when he sensed that an image was taking form. "I see her, she's... About to fall off a cliff," Zehir finished the sentence with some amount of panic in his voice and dashed off in the direction that he sensed that the girl was in. The rest of the group followed, ignoring how ridiculous Zehir looked as he ran for the time being, as the young wizard led them along the cliff face to the west of the Tajra Oasis northern exit.

Zehir reached the girl first, noting that he had arrived just in time to prevent her from injuring herself by falling down the twenty foot cliff that she was currently dangling over. He positioned himself just beneath her so he could attempt to catch her if she fell before he could cast his levitation spell, figuring that the short drop with the large cactus stand at the bottom just behind him was far enough away that he wouldn't stumble into it by accident.

"Hey!" Zehir called, as he mentally prepared the levitation spell. "Just stay where you are, we're here to help!"

Unfortunately the little girl, in trying to get a look at her rescuer, lost the last of her grip on the ledge she had been clinging to and fell away from the cliff before Zehir could even begin to cast his spell. Zehir managed to catch the girl before she could hit the ground, though the action caused him to stumble backwards and fall into the very cactus stand that he had been trying to avoid. He yelped as he fell three feet down the drop and landed on a bed of massive cactus spines.

The little girl opened her eyes and looked around, a smile appearing on her face as she realized that she was safe on the ground, and tried to hug her savior in gratitude for being rescued. "Thank y—" the little girl stopped when she noticed where Zehir had fallen. "Oh no! Are you okay?" she asked.

Zehir groaned a bit in reply, then tried to rise with the girl still sitting on his chest. "Not really..." he said, wincing as he managed to pull his head off a particularly vicious barrel cactus and taking a large number of its spines along with him. "I've had worse, but I can't really remember when that was at the moment," he said weakly.

"Tulia!" Jonathan's voice came from the ground above them as the guard arrived at the cactus stand.

"Jon!" the little girl, Tulia, called in reply as she reached towards Jonathan to let him pick her up. Zehir grunted quietly as the shift in weight forced a different part of his body deeper into the cactus thorns.

Once Tulia was safely among the guards of the oasis, Jonathan and one of his comrades reached in and pulled Zehir out. The young man winced as some of the spines were jerked out and stayed with the cacti while most of them came with him, making Zehir look like a humanoid pincushion once he was finally out. Zehir glanced back at the place he had fallen; the wet red tips of the thorns glinted in the sun, seeming to mock him, and he entertained the thought of setting the wretched plants on fire but reconsidered, not wanting to set a bad example with Tulia present. He glowered at an archmage who was shaking with barely-contained laughter and briefly considered pushing him into the cacti as well, though in the end he decided to let it go this time.

"She's unharmed," one of the guardsmen said, hauling Tulia up and bracing her against his hip. "Thank you sir. She could've been seriously hurt if you hadn't found her when you did."

"Let's get back to Tajra. The medics can take care of you there," Jonathan said, careful to avoid the spines as he patted Zehir on the shoulder.

"Right," Zehir replied, suddenly feeling very tired. The cactus spines were itching _and_ stinging horribly now, and he wanted nothing more than being able to get rid of them.

The group set out along the trail that they'd come from, the guards and Tulia trying to distract Zehir from his pain by discussing the weather, local legends, and some of the residents of the oasis. After what seemed like ages to Zehir, they finally reached the oasis and the infirmary, where a nurse took him into a private room and started removing the cactus needles.

* * *

A few hours later Zehir carefully seated himself at one of the tables in the Three Palms tavern, having accepted an invitation to dinner from Jonathan and Tulia's family. Once everyone was seated and the family had finished thanking Zehir for his help, Jonathan nodded to Tulia and the little girl began to recount her tale.

"I was looking for rocks for my collection, when these mean people with pointy ears tried to take me away!" Tulia began, an indignant look on her face as she remembered those who dared to interrupt her during her rock collecting. "One of them grabbed me and tried to pick me up, so I..." the little girl trailed off, glancing sidelong at her parents and blushing in shame at having done something naughty, then she continued in a lower voice, "So I bit him, and he yelled and let me go. I ran away and hid behind some rocks, but after they were gone I couldn't get back down." Tulia rubbed her eyes, which had begun to water; being trapped like that had been one of the most terrifying parts of the ordeal. Tulia's mother stroked her daughter's hair in order to soothe her, and the girl leaned against her mother, taking strength from her presence.

The dinner continued without incident, and ended with Tulia offering to show Zehir her rock collection, to which he replied that he would if he had the time. Once the family had left the tavern, Jonathan turned to Zehir, a serious look on his face. "That was just the shortened version she gave you there. Her parents got her to tell the whole thing to us, she said that the bandits mentioned something about a master and that they tried to take the stones she'd been carrying with her as well," he leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I wanted her to keep it as short as she wanted. She's had a long day, as you can imagine."

Zehir nodded. "So what does the story she told lead you to think?" he asked, figuring that the guard had already spent a great deal of time thinking about what the details could mean.

"It leads me to think that there's some foul magic at play, or perhaps something worse," Jonathan replied, looking even more tired than usual. "We found tracks that led east into the desert, we figure that's where the bandits are hiding," he said, pulling a small chart out of his pocket and spreading it out on the table where Zehir could see it. Jonathan tapped a part of the map that was marked by symbols representing a large stand of rocks. "Here," he said. "If we can eliminate them now, the oasis will be safe."

"And perhaps take a few prisoners to find out who this master is supposed to be?" Zehir suggested. He worried that there might be a demon involved if the dark elves bothered to mention any sort of master.

"Of course," Jonathan replied. "I'd also appreciate it if you would take a look at Tulia's stone collection, see if there's really anything that would interest bandits enough to steal them. Perhaps some magical property that we overlooked."

"Sounds good," Zehir said, standing as carefully so as to avoid bumping his cactus wounds as much as possible. "I'll see you tomorrow then."

It was late into the evening by now, and the desert air was chilly without the sun around to heat it. Zehir made his way back to his tent and put a few runed heat stones into a small brazier to keep the cold at bay before sitting down at his desk and pulling Narxes' box over again. Just because he was helping out didn't mean he got to neglect his paperwork entirely, at least in the evenings. This time the note from Narxes said that they were almost a quarter of the way through the horrendous pile of parchment that currently swamped Zehir's desk at home, and the young wizard looked forward to the day when he wouldn't have to slog through paperwork for hours during his evenings. Zehir rubbed his eyes and removed the first paper in the stack; tonight would be yet another long night, if this paperwork had anything to do with it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The Bones of Tajrakshekt**

Tulia greeted her visitors with enthusiasm the next morning, growing especially excited when Zehir told her that he wanted to see her rock collection. Jonathan and the girl's family watched as Tulia carefully set her rocks out for inspection. Each stone was highly polished, some even clear and glass-like, and all had come from various locations around the oasis. Zehir, who sat cross-legged on the floor as Tulia showed off her collection, picked up a glassy stone that the girl had placed near his foot. Upon closer inspection, he realized that this stone didn't just _look_ like it was made of glass, it _was_ glass, sand that had been melted by intense heat many years ago. Zehir held the stone up to the light, noting that there were even small, glittering flecks of other material trapped within the blob of glass. He then held the stone in the palm of his left hand and touched it with the index finger of his right, allowing his magic to flow through it.

The stone briefly flared with golden light, then faded until it produced a faint glow, nearly invisible in the light of day. Zehir looked up to find Tulia standing less than a foot away, staring at the stone with wide brown eyes. She looked up at Zehir when she felt his eyes upon her, then grinned and giggled with delight, obviously amused by his drawing light from the stone.

"Interesting," Zehir said, offering the stone to Tulia.

The girl poked it briefly to see if it was hot, then took it in her own small hands. "It's warm," she said, stroking it gently with one finger.

"Yes, that's from the spell I just used," Zehir said, propping his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers before him. After a few moments he swept his right hand over several more stones that sat on the floor before him, and each flared with light as Zehir's hand came close to them. "It seems that at one point in time, these stones were awash with magical power," Zehir said, partly to himself and partly to Jonathan, who was within earshot. "It must have been a very long time ago, since there's barely any power left in these."

"Interesting," Jonathan said, kneeling down to pick up a stone himself. "Well Tulia, you certainly have a knack for finding odd things," he said, putting the stone down after a brief inspection. "Shall we go?"

"Just one thing I need to do first," Zehir said, beckoning Tulia over to him. "I want to check if Tulia has any magical ability."

Tulia stepped closer and squirmed with excitement; she knew what magic was, she'd watched the wizards of the oasis use it and had always thought it looked fun.

"But neither of us use magic," Tulia's father said.

"Sometimes these talents pop up in non-magical families," Zehir said, gently touching his fingers to Tulia's forehead and quietly mumbling the spell. Unburning gold fire flowed over the girl, then dissipated as Zehir drew back. He got to his feet and dusted off his clothes, then looked down at Tulia. "Congratulations miss Tulia, you're going to be a wizard some day," he said, holding his hand out to her to shake.

Tulia shook Zehir's hand energetically, a huge grin on her face, before letting out a loud whoop and running through the house while her parents looked on. Zehir walked over to Tulia's parents to speak with them while the girl continued to run around in excited circles. "Are there any qualified instructors here that you know of?" he asked them politely. "If not, there are probably a few in the Silver Cities who would enjoy spending time in the country in order to instruct her."

"I think Burmik would be able to," Jonathan cut in. "He's the one that installed the elemental conflux here."

Zehir glanced at Tulia's collection of rocks, then turned back to the group. "You know, that might be for the best, since she seems to have a way with finding stones that have held power before. I wouldn't be surprised if she specialized in Summoning. Just make sure she starts her training as soon as possible. Untrained wizards can be a bit dangerous to others until they learn control."

Tulia's parents nodded as Jonathan clapped his hands together. "Now that things are settled here, are you ready for our mission?" he asked.

"Yes, let's get going," Zehir said, following Jonathan out and giving Tulia a short wave of farewell, which the girl returned with great enthusiasm.

* * *

The harsh desert sun beat down on the group as they trekked across the burning sands. The party was made up of half the guard from the oasis, including Jonathan, and Zehir, along with a portion of his small army. The sand ran very deep in this area and dunes dominated the landscape since everything else had been buried by the desert.

Zehir held a spyglass that Jonathan had brought along up to his eye and looked out to the east, where the bandit camp was supposed to be. The distant rock cluster was just barely visible above the shimmering heat waves of the desert. For curiosity's sake Zehir looked at the surrounding dunes as well, to see if there was still any trace of the bandits. While he found no trace of sentient creatures, Zehir did spot something odd to the south, and decided that he would walk over and have a closer look after he handed the spyglass back to Jonathan.

The guard accepted the spyglass absentmindedly and used it to peer at the bandits' hiding place, not paying much mind to where Zehir was going. He spoke quietly with one of his comrades, gesturing to a map that he held in one hand, as Zehir made his way down the dune that they were standing on.

After walking carefully down to a dip between dunes, Zehir dusted himself off and approached the strange objects that he had spotted with the spyglass. The tips of several massive bones poked out of the sand, bleached white by the harsh desert sun and polished by the shifting sands of the desert. The air around the exposed tips pulsed with faint, barely noticeable power, and Zehir wondered if they were somehow connected to Tulia's stones as he reached out to touch the closest bone.

Indescribable fear swamped Zehir like a massive ocean wave as his skin made contact with the bone. Terror locked up his muscles and constricted his lungs as he unsuccessfully tried to pull away, trapped against the very object that tormented him so. A short cough escaped Zehir's lips as he tried to breathe, but the terror continued to strangle him.

On the crest of the adjacent dune Jonathan looked around for Zehir and called his name. They would have to move out soon, and they couldn't leave the wizard behind.

Zehir heard the call, almost undetectable, through the fear that held him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, everything went black and Zehir fell to the sand as his body went limp. Had he been able to think over the terror that had smothered his mind, he would have wondered at how he had not noticed the awful power of the bones before he touched them.

"Spread out and look for him," Jonathan said to his men as he himself donned the spyglass and searched the surrounding dunes for their missing party member. His heart skipped a beat when he spotted Zehir's unconscious body, and cold apprehension filled it when he noticed what was next to the young wizard. "There!" he called, pointing to where Zehir lay. "Quickly! It's the Bones!"

"What!" one of the archmagi called from where he had been searching. "What do you mean bones?"

The guardsmen who were running towards where Jonathan pointed didn't bother to answer. They pulled Zehir away from the bones as soon as they reached him and began to carry him back to the pack animals.

"Don't touch that," one of the guards said as he slapped an inquisitive archmage's hand away from the Bones. "They're cursed. They effect anyone who touches them."

The archmage backed away from the bones, eying them as if they might be explosive, and followed the guards who carried Zehir's body away. "Is he alright? Why didn't you warn us earlier?" he snapped at Jonathan as he caught up with the guards.

"He'll be fine once Kalifra's seen to him. They don't usually surface this far north," Jonathan replied as they ran with the group of guards. "We honestly thought they were still submerged, but apparently they've come up just within the last couple of days." He held up a hand to silence the archmage when he tried to speak further. "We'll explain everything later. Right now we need to get Zehir back to the oasis so we can tend to him there."

* * *

Kalifra, the head healer of Tajra Oasis, shooed the crowd that had gathered around Zehir's bed away and waved a bottle of smelling salts under his nose. Zehir inhaled sharply as the bottle passed under his nose and coughed. He pressed a hand to his aching head and looked around the room, unsure of where he was or what had happened.

A few of the onlookers drifted out of the room once it was obvious that Zehir was just fine. Jonathan—who had been leaning against the wall waiting for most of the crowd to leave—pulled up a chair beside Zehir's bed and took a seat. "You gave us quite a scare there," he said.

"What _was_ that?" Zehir asked, sitting up and looking down at his hands. They were red and raw, as if they'd been thoroughly scoured and cleaned.

"They're called the Bones of Tajrakshekt," Jonathan said. "We don't know much about them, though they've been here longer than any civilization. What we do know is that any who touch the Bones are consumed by fear, and nightmares for days after. It's also rumored that having any piece of the Bones on you, even the smallest fragment, for an extended period of time will cause you to go mad." Jonathan gestured to Zehir's hands, "Though it's never been confirmed, we don't want to take chances with the Bones. They're full of old, dangerous magic, that much is for sure."

"You're lucky," Kalifra said as she entered the room with her healer kit under her arm. "Had you been older or unhealthy, the fear could have caused your heart to explode." She knelt beside the bed and gestured for Zehir to hold his hands out to her so she could rub healing balm on them.

Zehir obeyed without hesitation; his hands had begun to sting horribly. "And why wasn't I warned about this? Even I didn't notice those things were full of dangerous magic until I touched them," he said somewhat testily. He was annoyed that Jonathan had not thought the Bones important, or dangerous, enough to at least mention to the young wizard.

"Honestly, we thought that they would still be underground, and they don't tend to surface as far north as we were. We checked them the day after you arrived and they were still submerged, so we figured that we wouldn't have to worry about them for a time," Jonathan said, leaning back in his chair as Kalifra did her work.

"Another strange thing about the Bones," Kalifra said as she released Zehir's hands. "They tend to stay underground during peacetime, and rise when there is a large amount of conflict among the nations. A large portion of the skeleton was exposed during Isabel's War, and it remained that way until the impostor queen was banished." She got up and walked over to a table nearby. "They grow restless when the world is rife with misery. If we find that more bones are surfacing within the next few days, I fear that it will mean that Ashan may soon be at war once again," Kalifra sighed as she pulled jars full of herbs out of her healer kit and began to mix them.

"We were worried that if we told you about the Bones you'd do something stupid, like go looking for them," Jonathan added. "We've seen visiting wizards do it before," he said as Zehir opened his mouth to argue that he would never do something so idiotic as actually go _looking_ for something so dangerous. "And not all of them came back."

"Sometimes we found the bodies," Kalifra cut in as she continued to measure out the herbs. "Most of the time they were buried with the Bones before we could find them."

Zehir sighed and leaned back against the pillows again. "How long was I unconscious?" he asked.

"Around ten hours," Kalifra said as she finished whatever she was mixing by adding some of her own magic. She poured the herbs into a cloth bag, then walked over to Zehir and held it out to him. "Take a cup of this tea before bed for at least a week. It'll discourage dreaming, as a mild preventative for the nightmares you're sure to experience because of the Bones." After Zehir accepted the bag, she handed him a small jar of balm as well. "It's not a guarantee against the nightmares, but it should help a bit. This is for your hands." Having said her piece, Kalifra got to her feet and walked back to the table to begin packing her supplies back into the healer bag.

"Thanks," Zehir said. "So when am I allowed to leave?"

Kalifra paused in her packing of her healer bag and looked over at him, gauging whether it would be sensible to deem Zehir healthy enough to leave the infirmary. "We usually keep people who've touched the Bones overnight just in case," she said, continuing with her packing. "If you want to stay in your camp tonight it's fine by me, just remember to take a cup of that tea before you go to sleep."

* * *

Zehir leaned back in his chair and settled the last piece of paperwork on the finished stack. Kalifra had told Jonathan to hold off on chasing after the bandits for at least one more day while Zehir rested. He'd felt strangely weary ever since waking up after touching the bones, and he hoped that the feeling would go away after a good night's sleep. Now he had just finished yet another stack of paperwork sent by Narxes and was more than ready to have some of Kalifra's tea and get some sleep.

The tea was fairly bitter to the taste, but Zehir finished it as he sent the stack of papers back to Narxes through the magic box. The drowsiness that Zehir had been feeling throughout the day intensified as he readied himself for bed, cleaning his teeth and pulling on fine cotton pants and a shirt of the same material to keep the chill of the desert night at bay. Zehir was asleep almost as soon as he lay down in his cot.

_Moonlight bathed the sand dunes, making them look like massive snowdrifts in the cold night. Zehir looked down at himself; he was dressed in his normal clothes, as if he'd just gone out for a walk, but the oasis and its surrounding cliffs were nowhere in sight. A structure that Zehir had never seen before was the only thing that broke the boring monotony of the dunes, a large ornate pyramid made of white and blue stone._

_ Zehir knelt down and picked up a handful of sand, holding it loosely so the coarse grains could fall easily through his fingers. It felt so real. He wasn't sure whether this was a dream or not; he wouldn't be surprised to find that something had teleported him out here without him knowing it. A weak breeze caressed the grains of sand as they fell from Zehir's hand, and he could feel its chill as it played along his back._

_ He looked up at the stars. They were all in their proper place, he could use them to get back to the Tajra Oasis if he wished, since he could see the massive mountain of sand that lay to the east of the oasis. He glanced back at the pyramid, then turned and started to walk in the direction of Tajra Oasis. Zehir only managed to move three steps before the sands around him erupted with activity._

_ Five mummies pulled themselves out of the sands and lunged at Zehir, who stumbled back in surprise and revulsion as he opened his mouth to recite a spell that would set the creatures aflame. Cold invisible claws sank into his neck and tightened around Zehir's vocal chords, preventing him from making even the slightest sound. Zehir clutched at his throat, trying to find some way to regain his ability to speak, and tripped over himself as he tried to get away from the mummies._

_ Mutely he clambered to his feet in the loose sand and fled his attackers, not daring to let them get close enough to touch him. Only when Zehir's feet hit the pale stone of the pyramid's front court did he realize that the undead were herding him towards the building, where its entrance gaped like a __black bottomless pit. Zehir veered left to run out into the dunes past the pyramid, but was stopped when more mummies emerged from the sands before him. They were closing in on all sides now, the only way to escape them would be to run into the pyramid and hope that there was another way out._

_ Zehir's shoes scratched against the courtyard stones as he whipped around and sprinted into the pyramid._

Grittchit jogged back towards camp, his step a bit lighter than usual. He had just had a long, interesting discussion with the local alchemist about joint cleaner and possible mixtures that would make it more effective. The wizards here in the oasis weren't quite so prejudiced against the "servant" races of the Silver Cities, and Grittchit found this to be very refreshing. It was nice to be able to talk to someone without them being so busy looking down their nose at you that they couldn't hear a word you said. Thankfully there were a few wizards in the Silver Cities who weren't entirely disdainful as well, but they were few and far between. One of them happened to be the Silver League's current First of the Circle.

The gremlin glanced at Zehir's tent as he walked past it. Something nagged at him as he looked at it, and he began to walk towards the entrance.

_Walls covered with detailed paintings and hieroglyphs whirled past as Zehir ran down the halls. Had it been any other time, he would have delighted in being able to decipher what was written and recorded on these stones, but now was not the time. Zehir could hear the mummies' half-jogging, half-shuffling gait rustling in the halls behind him, he had to escape them, without his magic he was defenseless. Besides the saber slung over his shoulder he had nothing, and he didn't even know how to use the blade, he wore it because he thought it looked good with his outfit._

_ The hallway opened out into a vast chamber supported by intricately-carved columns, the corners and roof of which were concealed in shadow. In the center of the chamber, resting on an ornate dais, was a massive dragon skull, so large that it dwarfed most of the buildings in Tajra Oasis. It gleamed a polished white in the flickering light of magical braziers, its eye sockets glittering, as they were filled with a strange crystalline rock. _

_ Zehir stopped so suddenly upon seeing the skull that he toppled over backwards, bashing his elbows in the fall. The burst of pain told him that this was no ordinary dream, if it was even a dream at all. A sense of dread filled him as he stared at the nightmarish object, and he could feel the panic welling up like a sickly wave as all sound in the chamber faded away._

Upon entering the tent Grittchit found nothing immediately out of the ordinary. He'd felt that there was something wrong, but couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. Zehir had tidied things a bit before going to bed, and there wasn't anyone else in the tent other than Grittchit and its owner. The gremlin walked quietly over to where Zehir lay on his cot, in response to a strange noise that had caught his attention. It was a dull thumping, rhythmic and constant, that seemed to be coming from Zehir or somewhere near him.

To the gremlin's surprise, the sound was coming from Zehir himself. The young wizard's heart was pumping so hard that it made an audible sound and caused his body to shift slightly every time it beat. Grittchit's uneasiness intensified when he noticed that Zehir was also drenched in sweat and seemed to radiate heat, causing his shirt to cling to his body. It seemed that the man was trapped within a nightmare that he could not escape.

"Zehir?" Grittchit said, almost timidly. "Zehir!" this time he called at nearly the top of his voice and shook the wizard, trying to rouse him.

_An invisible force rose up out of the shadows and shoved Zehir into a nearby column as he watched the skull. The thing was alive somehow, and now it began to rise, as if it were still attached to a neck that was drawing it up. It was obvious that this skull had some sort of sentience, as Zehir could feel its mind brush his own before it bore down on him with its will. Zehir opened his mouth in a silent scream of pain and squirmed against the thing that pinned him to the column._

_ "Submit!" the voice thundered in his head, ragged and terrifying, seemingly as ageless as __Ashan itself._

_ Despite his predicament, Zehir resisted, shaking his head back and forth furiously to tell the monster that it would not have its way._

His first attempts having been unsuccessful, Grittchit felt that he had no alternative; he lept nimbly up onto the cot next to Zehir and levered his arms under the wizard's body.

_The monster was obviously very displeased by Zehir's resistance, and he could only guess at what it would do next. He could only watch as the skull's jaws opened..._

Grittchit braced himself and, in one swift movement, lifted Zehir off the cot and dropped him to the floor.

_The skull flashed towards him, all he could see was its teeth..._

Zehir hit the floor face first. His eyes snapped open and he gasped, looking around the tent as if he were unsure about where he was.

"Lord Zehir, I'm sorry," Grittchit said, stumbling off the cot as he apologized. "You wouldn't wake when I called your name..."

The wizard looked at Grittchit, seemingly noticing him for the first time. "Don't," he said, holding a hand to his head; the ache was back. "Don't apologize. It was awful..."

Grittchit sidestepped around to a position that allowed him to see Zehir's face; the man was pale, and looked exhausted. Zehir noticed the gremlin peering at his face and tried to smile. "Thanks, I'll be fine now," he said. The gremlin nodded, and though he was unsure about how truthful Zehir was being with that statement, he bowed politely and left the tent.

Zehir shivered; what had been a tolerable chill before was now wretchedly frigid to his sweat-soaked body. After changing into dry clothes he sat at his desk and read the book on elemental lore that the wizard Burmik had lent to him, unwilling to go back to sleep just yet, in case the nightmare was there waiting for him. Eventually exhaustion claimed him, and Zehir fell asleep at his desk. This time the only nightmares that awaited him were the normal kind that he could escape, and all night he swung back and forth between fitful dreaming and wakefulness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Tomb of the Vile Skull**

Burmik burst into the infirmary just after the sun's light began to brighten the sky, with Jonathan close behind him. Kalifra looked up from the herbal mix she was preparing. "Did you feel it?" she asked, her hands trembling.

"Yes. It came, last night," Burmik was shaking as well. "I... Couldn't leave my house last night, it was too terrifying..."

"I could barely understand what Burmik was talking about when I came to see him this morning," Jonathan said. Burmik had sent a magical note to Jonathan requesting that he come to see him at dawn. "Do you know why it was here?"

"It was after someone," Kalifra said, tightly clasping her hands before her in an attempt to stop their shaking. "The fear was so strong, all I could do was cower in my room and hope it would go away..."

"You don't think it was after Zehir, do you?" Jonathan asked apprehensively.

Without another word the three rushed out of the infirmary and sprinted towards Zehir's camp, dreading what they might find when they arrived there. Much to their relief they found that not only was the camp intact, it also seemed to be functioning normally. The only members who were not out stretching or tending to their morning duties were the archmagi and Zehir himself.

Jonathan walked over to Zehir's tent and was about to go in when Zehir himself stepped out and almost bumped into the guardsman. "Oh, Jonathan," Zehir said, looking and sounding very tired.

"Had a bad night?" Jonathan asked, eying the shadows under Zehir's eyes, as well as his general paleness.

"How did you know?" Zehir asked halfheartedly. Not only did he still feel as weary as he did the day before, he also had a mild headache that seemed to be getting worse as the morning wore on. He held the book he had been carrying out to Burmik when he noticed the other wizard, "Thanks for lending it to me. I finished it last night."

Burmik accepted the book. "You were the one it came after, weren't you?" he asked.

Zehir looked around at his three visitors, then sighed. "Let's talk inside, I think I need to sit down." He held the tent flap open for them, and entered himself after they were all inside. With his guests seated in light-weight chairs at various points around the tent, Zehir took the last chair himself and tiredly rested his head in one hand. "So, is there something you forgot to tell me? Again?" he asked tartly. "You never told me that a monster would come after me in my sleep." Perhaps he was being a bit harsh on the people of the oasis, but tiredness had lessened his already short patience.

"This has never happened before," Jonathan cut in before Zehir could say anything else. "We didn't even know there was a monster connected to the Bones. They were always completely inanimate."

"It seems that only those who could use magic felt its presence," Kalifra added, clasping her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. "My husband didn't even wake when it came, and Jonathan didn't notice it either..."

"You know..." Burmik began, stroking his bushy white beard and knitting his pale brows in thought. "The elementals have been touchy as of late as well. Whenever I ask them, they tell me that "they" woke something up that should've stayed asleep. They refuse to tell me who "they" are, though. I swear, sometimes they're as bad as oracles." The last sentence was a grumble, partly because Burmik was annoyed that the elemtentals might be keeping something from him. "But do you think "they" might be the bandits that've been harassing us lately?"

"It's possible," Jon said. "We need to get rid of them anyway, and if they're the ones causing this magical mess, so much the better once they're dealt with." He looked at Zehir, who seemed the worse for wear due to his headache and tiredness. "Will you be able to come with us?"

"Yeah, let's get it over with," Zehir said, rubbing his forehead with one hand; his headache had intensified as they sat in his tent, and it felt like there was a swarm of angry, _painful_ bees buzzing around inside of his skull. "Just give me something for the headache and we can get going."

* * *

Two days of hard riding brought the group to the stands of rocks and cacti that Jonathan had guessed served as the bandit hideout. Half the guard of the oasis was present, along with half of Zehir's archmagi and gremlins; he'd left his golems to guard the oasis in case an attack came while they were away. Throughout the entire trip Zehir's headache remained as a constant dull pain, causing him to be slightly irritable, though he tried to hold his tongue when speaking to anyone else. Upon reaching the border of the stands, the group found obvious signs of activity, confirming Jonathan's suspicion that the bandits had at least been there recently. The sand in front of one of the trails that wound through the cacti and rocks had been thoroughly disturbed recently, and Jonathan carefully scouted ahead to see if they were clear to enter.

When the guardsman returned, his face was grim. "It's clear. Seems we're a bit late," he said.

The group hurriedly followed, with Zehir at the front, to see what Jonathan meant. After winding and twisting for a good many yards, the trail opened up into a clearing. Zehir paled as he fought the urge to vomit at the sight that greeted them; the bodies of dead dark elves littered the clearing, the unrelenting heat of the day causing them to create a stench that was foul enough to make his eyes water. Some had been ripped limb from limb, while others lay in odd positions, their backs or necks twisted and broken.

"Dragon of Light..." one of the guards muttered as he looked upon the clearing. "When do you reckon this happened, Jon?"

Jon grimaced with disgust as he knelt down next to one of the bodies and examined it. "By the degree of decay, I'd say roughly two days ago," he replied.

"There were prisoners," another guard said, striding towards the southern trail that led away from the clearing and pointing at the prominent drag marks that ran through the loose sand.

"Missing villagers?" Zehir suggested, having overcome his urge to be violently sick from what he saw, though the act of suppressing it only made his current headache worse.

"Let's check for survivors," Jonathan said, getting back up. "They may have escaped during the battle, one group per trail." He pointed at the three unexplored trails that led out of the clearing, one to the south, one northwest, and the last to the east.

Their group split, with Zehir and a small group taking on the eastern trail. The path eventually opened up into a smaller clearing that lacked the horrific gore that the first clearing had been filled with. Here the sand was merely slightly disturbed, and there were no other paths leading away from the area. Zehir was about to enter the clearing when a shadow rose from the shelter of the scrub on the far side and darted at him, shoving him into the dense cluster of cacti that he was standing next to.

Zehir let out a yell of fury as he pulled himself out of the thorns and cast about, trying to find whoever was responsible for shoving him into the wretched pointy plants yet again. His eyes narrowed when he spotted the dark elf who had tried to escape by shoving past him, only to be stopped by the fact that Zehir's companions had the trail completely blocked off. "I am so close to blowing you up right now it's not even funny," Zehir snarled, his voice tight over the pain of the cactus thorns that now covered the left side of his body. "You'd better have a damn good reason for pushing me into those wretched plants."

The dark elf—a tall blue-haired female dressed in uncommonly modest clothes for one of her kind—blinked at Zehir, and he noticed that her eyes were cerulean blue, with plainly visible pupils. "Thought you lot were a group of mummies, back to finish the job," she said plainly. "They killed or dragged off everyone else."

"Oh, so you're one of the bandits," Zehir said, walking over to the dark elf. Without warning, he pushed her into a nearby stand of cacti. "And now we'll take you back to Jonathan."

"Lord Zehir! That was completely unnecessary!" one of the archmagi cried as another helped the dark elf out of the cacti that she had fallen into.

"She started it, and _I'm in a bad mood_," Zehir muttered dangerously, glaring at the archmage.

"It was still awfully petty," the older wizard nagged.

Instead of replying verbally, Zehir scowled, plucked out a particularly annoying thorn that was lodged in his left temple, and stiffly flicked it at the archmage's head. The spine harmlessly bounced off the archmage's turban and fell to the ground. The old wizard sighed through his nose and rolled his eyes, then followed the group as it led the dark elf to the main clearing to wait for Jonathan.

The other search parties returned to the main clearing empty-handed, and were surprised to find Zehir's group surrounding a dark elf woman, with Zehir himself grumbling to himself in the back and pulling cactus spines off the left side of his body; somehow the dark elf had escaped her encounter with the cacti with very few thorns, probably due to the nimbleness that most dark elves were known to possess.

"Cactus again, Zehir?" Jonathan asked, rubbing the back of his head as he looked at the young mage. "How'd you fall in them this time?"

Zehir scowled and wordlessly jerked a thumb at the dark elf, then continued removing the cactus spines; anger had made his headache even worse, on top of the intense stinging caused by the cactus spines. She stood calmly in the center of Zehir's group, having pulled out the few thorns that stuck to her on the way to the main clearing. A slight, disgusted wrinkle of her nose was the only sign she gave of noticing the carnage that littered the clearing. She sighed. "His group startled me and I knocked him into them while I was trying to escape," she explained.

"So why haven't you run off now?" Jonathan asked. "The eastern trail is completely clear." Zehir glanced at Jonathan, unsure of what the guardsman was suggesting.

The dark elf shrugged. "It's nice to have some _living_ company," she said, gesturing to the group that surrounded her. "Perhaps a chance to kill off the undead that made life so difficult..."

"Ah, problem with that is, you're part of the bandit group that's been bothering the oasis lately," Jonathan said, crossing his arms over his chest. "We can't trust you. In fact I'm pretty sure that Zehir over there would blast you to kingdom come at the first opportunity," he added, pointing at Zehir.

Clearly hearing Zehir's name for the first time caused the dark elf to pause. "Zehir? First of the Circle from the Silver Cities?" she asked.

"The very same," Zehir grumbled, removing a thorn that had lodged itself in the membrane between two of his fingers.

An expression of relief briefly passed over the elf's face. "Then you know Ylaya, she can vouch for me."

"Really? It worries me to hear that Ylaya is supporting bandits who prey on Ygg-Chall's allies now," Zehir said coldly, not bothering to look at the dark elf and instead checking his left hand to see if he missed any thorns. "Doesn't sound like her at all."

The dark elf sighed; it was obvious that Zehir was going to continue being difficult with the mood he was in. "I'm one of her agents. Contact her, tell her that Kylara is reporting in. My mission's pretty much over now that this group is dead."

Zehir left off checking his lower left arm for cactus spines and pulled out his scrying mirror again, rolling his eyes as he did; with it he would be able to talk to Ylaya if she was near a reflective surface, or alert her to Zehir's call if she wasn't. Since Ylaya was a friend and Zehir knew her fairly well, he didn't need a piece of her to focus his spell. His dark brows furrowed with worry when the mirror revealed nothing but a gray fog. "That's odd," Zehir said, his foul attitude having been temporarily dissolved by the discovery. "I should be able to reach her easily."

Kylara clenched her hands with worry as she looked over Zehir's shoulder at the small round mirror; she had moved over to watch while he was focusing on the spell. She was a few inches taller than him, to his added annoyance. "Is she alright? Can you tell?"

Her tone suggested that she was genuinely concerned for Ylaya's well-being, though Zehir didn't trust her completely just yet. "No, I can't. This has never really happened before," he said.

With a sigh the dark elf walked back to where she'd been standing before, the long braid of her hair swinging back and forth with her gait. Jonathan had been watching the events silently, and now he raised his eyebrows. "What do you think, Zehir?" he asked. "Should we tie her up or let her come with us?"

Zehir glanced at Kylara, then he looked back to Jonathan and shrugged. "We can always capture her if she tries to run," he said. "What can you tell us about what went on here?" Zehir asked, gesturing at the bodies.

"A big group of mummies showed up, tried to drag the prisoners away," she held up her hands when Jonathan scowled at her. "The prisoners weren't my idea. I tried to dissuade them from taking them, and if I'd protested too much they would have gotten suspicious," Kylara explained. "The leader of our group had been carrying around this... Weird medallion made of crystal, I swear that's what made him start acting strange, ever since he took it from that damn pyramid—"

"Pyramid?" Zehir interrupted, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "What did it look like?"

"Big, pointy, made of blue and white stone, with a courtyard," she said, waving a hand dismissively. She frowned when she noticed how pale Zehir had become. "What's wrong?"

"Ah, just a bad feeling," Zehir said.

Kylara eyed the wizard for a moment, then shook her head and continued from where she'd left off. "Our leader actually went with the mummies _willingly_, along with around half of the others. The rest fought the undead... You can see how well that turned out for them," she gestured at the nearest corpse.

"And you can take us to the pyramid?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes. I followed them for about a day before I saw it again, it's definitely the place they were headed to," Kylara replied, nodding. "It's about two days south of here."

"Could be a trap..." one of the guardsmen murmured, with a rumble of agreement running through the rest in the crowd.

Jonathan nodded. "Could be, but we need to rescue those people. There are ten of them missing right now, and I suspect that all of them are prisoners of the undead now," he glanced at Kylara as he said this, as if asking her whether the count was correct, and the dark elf nodded; the bandits had brought in ten hostages altogether, and they had all been taken by the mummies. "Well, Zehir?" Jonathan asked, glancing at the young wizard, who had finished cleaning the thorns off himself and was tiredly running his fingers through his hair. "You still up to it?"

"Of course," Zehir said, looking up at the rest of the group. "If anything, I need to pay that monster back for giving me this wretched headache, and I have a very strong feeling that it will be waiting in that pyramid." He sighed and looked around at the corpses littering the clearing. "But first we need to clean this up, it feels wrong to just leave them sitting out in the open for anything to pick up."

Jonathan looked like he couldn't disagree more with Zehir on that fact, since the bandits had been harassing his home for weeks, but he assisted in digging the graves and settling the corpses into them anyway. The clearing looked much nicer after they finished, though it was still covered in dried puddles of blood. After they finished Jonathan shaded his eyes, looking to the west as the sun made the final leg of its journey across the bleached blue sky. "We'll set up camp here for the night, there's another large clearing farther north that we can get our mounts into," he said.

Silently the group filed out of the clearing and walked back to the entrance, where they'd left their mounts. The guard that had been keeping watch gave a short wave and assisted in untying the leads. Kylara craned her neck, looking around the dunes and cacti, then put two fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly. The rectangular head of a large blue raptor popped up above a nearby grove of cacti, and the beast pulled itself from its hiding place before trotting over to nuzzle its master.

"Ty, did you miss me?" she cooed to him as she scratched the crease between his neck and jaw. The raptor grumbled in pleasure and relief, then crouched to allow her to mount more easily. "Good boy," Kylara said, gently scratching his neck. The large reptile had hidden itself away with all its gear on, and Kylara was ready to go as soon as the group moved out.

The members of the group went about various activities once they'd set up camp, some sharpening weapons, others napping after such a tiresome day. Zehir sat outside his small tent, the scrying mirror held in his lap, and tried to contact Ylaya again. He tried this until it made his headache worse, at which point he sighed and tucked the mirror away before entering his tent to turn in early.

Little did Zehir know, there had been a lone spectator watching his attempts throughout the evening. Kylara leaned back against Ty's scaly flank and drummed her fingers against her kneecap. It disturbed her greatly that Ylaya could not be reached, and she wondered—not for the first time—if something awful had happened to the Keeper of Law. She looked up when Jonathan approached her.

"Something wrong?" he asked nonchalantly.

Kylara shrugged. "Ylaya used to talk about Zehir, I didn't expect him to be such a grouch," she said, half-joking with her reply.

Jonathan waved a hand dismissively. "He's had a nasty headache for a few days now, so he's been short with everyone lately. Zehir's a nice fellow, once you get to know him. And once his headache's gone." Jonathan chuckled. "The sooner we fix this mess the sooner he'll feel better."

* * *

_Earlier that same day..._

Burmik woke to the sound of large boulders thumping the grassy ground just outside his front door; the earth elementals were on the move for some reason. He hurriedly pulled on a coat, tripped into a pair of slippers, and ran outside to see what all the fuss was about. Dozens of elementals of all kinds flowed from the elemental conflux and split evenly as they approached the central lake of the oasis, one headed north, and the other south. Once they reached the southern and northern entrances of Tajra Oasis, the elemental beings formed up in a defensive line and stood waiting.

A low rumble was now barely audible in the quiet morning air; the birds had stopped singing. Burmik, rightfully guessing that something horrible was coming towards the oasis, ran to rouse his fellow wizards and any able-bodied fighters that were left in the village. Soon all battle-ready residents had congregated around Tajra Lake, preparing for the worst as Burmik scaled one of the paths leading to the eastern plateau-top. The view that greeted him once he reached his vantage point made his stomach twist in fear.

Several hundred mummies approached the oasis at a shuffling jog, followed by something that moved under the sand like a fish just below the surface of the water. He turned to go back and tell the others of what he saw, and was surprised to find a fire elemental smoldering just behind him. Carefully it slipped past him to take up an offensive position near the edge of the cliff, where it would be able to rain fire down on any mummies that attempted to scale the small mountain. A quick glance along the plateau revealed that other fire elementals were doing the same, readying themselves for the coming assault.

"I whill take you to the grhound," an air elemental that had appeared before Burmik whispered in a voice that sounded like a light breeze.

"Uh, alright," Burmik said hesitantly; he'd never flown anywhere by elemental before.

Luckily the elemental was completely serious in getting Burmik to the ground safely, and soon his feet rested on the cool grass of the oasis once again. He ran over to the group of humans gathered near Tajra Lake. "There's a massive horde of mummies coming this way," he said breathlessly as he reached them.

Expressions of fear and apprehension appeared on the faces of the villagers. They left off wondering about their fate when Grittchit arrived with every one of Zehir's golems in tow, as the wizard had left the gremlin in charge of caring for them and directing them in case of an emergency such as this one. "I'm sending these to reinforce the elemental lines," he said before waving his instructions to the golems, who immediately broke off to assist the elementals.

Within minutes the mummies reached the entrances to the oasis and threw themselves at the defenses, smashing against the front line of earth elementals while the fire, water, and air beings behind them attempted to pick off the attackers before they could break through. One by one the earth elementals fell as the mummies focused on them, temporarily banishing their physical forms back to the elemental plane of earth. The undead then began to make short work of the remaining elementals as Zehir's golems slashed through their seemingly endless numbers with their blades.

The northern lines broke first, and mummies flooded past the struggling elementals to attack the people of the oasis. Soon after this, the southern line broke as well, and soon the entire oasis was overrun with undead. Burmik and Korjev stood back to back, firing off spell after spell as the mummies advanced on them.

A small girl's shrill scream cut through the air, followed by what sounded like a huge explosion. The two wizards watched in amazement as something sent several dozen mummies flying through the air, causing them to crumble into dust as they struck the ground. Seconds later a hulking mass of rock appeared behind the undead that assaulted the two men, and a huge stone fist made short work of clearing them out.

Burmik gaped at the huge being standing before him. "A grand elemental!" he shouted in disbelief. Such beings were only theorized about, even in the higher circles of the Silver Cities, as the spells and knowledge required to summon them had been lost during a war long ago.

Tulia grinned gleefully at her teacher from her perch the elemental's shoulder. "Rocky saved me!" she shouted happily, doing her best to hug Rocky's massive head.

"How..." Burmik began, but he stopped himself; explanations would have to wait until after the battle was over.

The mummies' forces dwindled as the fighting wore on, until midday when an unearthly shriek split the skies over the oasis. Humanoids and elementals alike flinched at the awful sound, while the undead paused in their attack and abruptly pulled back, taking captured villagers with them. The retreating undead left the oasis with surprising speed, even as the village's remaining forces attacked and destroyed them from behind. Soon the only remaining evidence of the battle were the piles of dust from destroyed mummies and magical scorch marks and craters that had been caused by the wizards' spells as they fought.

Wearily the villagers took stock of their numbers; twenty of their number had been carried off by the mummies, and none were dead. Tulia sobbed quietly as both her father and Rocky tried to give her comfort; her mother had been one of the residents that the mummies had carried off.

Burmik's hands shook with exhaustion as he helped to prepare healing salves for the minor injuries that several villagers had sustained during the fight. Kalifra had been kidnapped by the undead as well, leaving the less-skilled healers to tend to the people of the oasis. All they could do at this point was bandage people up and hope that the mummies wouldn't come back, and that Jonathan and the others would be able to rescue those who had been carried off.

Once all the villagers were seen to, Burmik's curiosity drove him to approach the grand earth elemental, who was now standing sentry outside of Tulia's house; the girl's father had put her to bed early that night, with the hope that she would be able to sleep. "Hello," he said uncertainly as he approached the massive being.

The grand elemental's glowing stone eyes fixed themselves on him. "You are going to ask how Tulia summoned me," he said plainly, with a deep voice that bore the sounds of grating boulders with it.

"Oh, well... Yes, I was," Burmik said truthfully.

"We do not come when called. Only when asked." The elemental rumbled quietly, then looked away; it would say no more.

* * *

Another two days of travel brought them within sight of the pyramid, which Zehir watched with no small amount of apprehension. Along the way Kylara had revealed that the bandit group responsible for the current mess had been under suspicion by Ylaya for quite some time, and the Keeper had sent Kylara to keep an eye on them. Unfortunately spying on the group had not been enough to keep them away from the tomb, and she also revealed that there was an even larger group that the troublemakers had originally split from.

As the party drew within a few miles of the structure, Jonathan called their attention to a quickly-approaching dust cloud that came from the west. The guardsman paled visibly as he looked at it through his spyglass.

"They're mummies," Jonathan said quietly.

Zehir muttered a sight spell that would allow him to see farther into the distance in order to confirm what Jonathan had spotted. Dozens of mummies ran over the dunes, some carrying bound and gagged prisoners over their shoulders. "They must have attacked the oasis while we were away," the young wizard said in dismay. "We can't let them get to the pyramid!" Zehir didn't know why he said this, but for some reason he had a hunch that things would take a turn for the worst if the prisoners were taken into the building before the mummies could be stopped.

Jonathan led the group in a hasty march, quickly eating up the last few miles of their journey and engaging the mummies in the courtyard of the pyramid itself. Zehir blasted the undead with fire spells while his elephant trampled any who came near into dust; though they rarely fought enemies at close range, each mount had been trained from an early age to protect its master in combat. Kylara leaped from the back of her raptor soon after they entered the fray, in order to put the knives that she had drawn from within her folds of clothing to better use. Ty fought alongside his master, ramming mummies into the sand and slashing at them with his sharp claws.

A few mummies carrying prisoners managed to make it into the pyramid during the confusion, and Zehir looked up from the enemies that he was currently setting aflame in time to see the last of them disappear inside the vast structure. He cast about, trying to find anyone close enough to signal to come with him, but he had been separated from the main part of the group in the heat of battle; the closest combatant was Kylara, and she was far out of earshot at this point. Zehir knew that something truly awful awaited the prisoners inside, but he hesitated after quickly guiding his elephant over to the entrance. Despite his apprehension, Zehir jumped down from his saddle and dashed inside, hoping to get to the villagers before something else did.

Kylara glanced towards the pyramid—checking to see if there were any more enemies in that direction—and spotted a flash of golden fabric as Zehir entered the shadows of the entrance, leaving his elephant to guard the door against any mummies that might try to enter after him. Without a moment's hesitation, the dark elf sprinted after him, whistling for her raptor to follow. Ty took up a guard position on the front archway as Kylara dashed after Zehir, hoping to catch up soon enough to give him some solid backup in case of a fight. Tracking Zehir was easy enough, since there were no side passages of any sort running off the main hall and he left quite a few incinerated mummies in his wake, and soon Kylara found herself in a massive room, the farthest reaches of which were obscured by shadow. Zehir stood frozen just inside the room, as if he had been trapped within an invisible block of ice. He had been caught in the act of taking a step back, seemingly because he had set his eyes on the horrible object that occupied the center of the room; a massive dragon skull. She stood and stared at the skull for a few moments, then turned to Zehir when it did nothing.

"Zehir?" Kylara asked, waving a hand in front of the young wizard's eyes. She frowned in annoyance when this produced no reaction, and took a few brief moments to examine Zehir more closely; now she could see that every muscle in his body was tense, throwing his bare neck and hands into especially sharp detail, and that he seemed to be breathing very little. "Zehir!" the dark elf snapped, this time placing herself squarely between Zehir's staring eyes and the skull. Now she jammed her thumb into a sensitive place between two of his ribs, hoping to get a reaction from him as a result of the pain.

Much to Kylara's relief—and brief amusement—Zehir's previously tense expression turned to one of comical agony as he tried to flinch away from her hand. This sudden movement caused him to lose his balance and fall to the floor, stirring up dust that had collected there over the years. "Ow..." he said, wincing as he rubbed the area that Kylara had hit.

"You were stuck," Kylara said, offering Zehir a hand up.

The wizard took it and allowed her to help him stand. "Thanks. It was trying to get me again," Zehir said, carefully avoiding the skull with his eyes. "It gets you when you look at it directly. Wait, don't!" he tried to grab her before she looked over her shoulder at the skull again, but she seemed immune to its terrible power.

"I looked at it earlier and nothing happened. Maybe it's because you use magic," she suggested. Further inspection of the room revealed the villagers that they had come after; some huddled together in fear while others stared blankly at the skull.

Zehir followed her gaze and noticed the prisoners as well, noting that those who were staring at the skull wore the clothes of wizards or healers. "I think you're right. Now we need to figure out how to get all these people out of here before any minions show up," he said, using a hand to shield his eyes from the skull as he jogged over to the villagers with Kylara.

One of the captive men jumped to his feet as they approached. "You came for us!" he said, obviously relieved by the sight of them. Upon hearing this, those who were not staring at the skull rose as well, murmuring thankful prayers or phrases of relief.

"Is anyone hurt?" Zehir asked, glancing quickly over the assembled villagers; they all seemed to be physically unharmed.

"We're fine, but they won't stop staring at that thing! I can't get Kalifra to move at all!" one of the women said in dismay, shaking the blank-faced healer's shoulders to prove her point. "They don't react to anything, even pain."

"It must have overwhelmed them already," Zehir said, thinking quickly. "Let's try removing them from the chamber and see if that helps."

The group moved toward the doorway, only to find that it was now blocked by an invisible wall of some sort. The prisoners began to panic, each wondering if they would ever escape this nightmare, while Zehir tried to find where the blocking spell was rooted. He tensed when he felt the power in the room shift, as if the monster were watching them closely.

"Kylara, help me," Zehir said, beckoning for the dark elf to come with him. "I need to find the focus for the blocking spell before that thing takes us all."

"Right," Kylara said, attempting to calm the prisoners one last time before going to Zehir. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just keep me from looking at it while I work," Zehir replied, turning to the heavily engraved walls and scanning them for traces of magic. He squinted as he looked further down the wall, having noticed an oddly-shaped patch of shadow on the ground. Kylara matched Zehir stride for stride as he hurried to the strange shadow, and showed some brief shock when she realized what it was.

The body of a dark elf warlock lay on the ground, clutching the chain of a strange crystalline amulet in his right hand. "That's our group leader," Kylara said quietly, reaching down to pick up the amulet.

"Wait," Zehir said quickly, seizing her hand with a surprisingly strong grip before she could touch the object. "That thing's part of the skull, don't touch it."

Kylara drew back as Zehir released her hand, relieved that he had told her that before she had a chance to touch the artifact. Instead she touched her hand to a strange black soot that covered the surrounding tile in intricate patterns and symbols. "A magic circle?" she mused.

The pair stood back to examine the patterns from a better angle, and Zehir paled as he realized what it was for. "That artifact allowed the skull to take him. He sacrificed himself to it, and removed some special bindings that were on it..." he said. "That's why it's able to keep us from leaving now, but if I can reverse the spell we should be able to get out..." Zehir knelt beside the blackened magic circle while Kylara positioned herself between him and the skull. After a few minutes of study the young wizard nodded and stood. "I can remove the barrier and free the villagers from here, the rest I can do once we're out."

"Good. Hurry up," Kylara said, shivering. Even she could feel the wrongness of the place now, as if the monster at the room's center was constantly growing stronger. She glanced at the prisoners near the exit every now and then, to make sure that they were still safe; they seemed fearful about their predicament, but they were still relatively unhurt.

Zehir quickly drew up a simpler magic circle—with Kylara mirroring his movements to keep the Skull out of his view—and stood at its center, focusing his magic as he performed the spell. One of the villagers yelped as her hand fell through the doorway—she had been pressing against the invisible barrier at that moment. Those who had been mesmerized by the skull shook their heads and blinked, their trance finally broken by Zehir's spell. "Alright, let's get out of here," Zehir said finally, after breaking the circle by rubbing his shoe over part of its perimeter.

The air in the chamber became heavy with anger as Zehir and Kylara followed the villagers out, and the young wizard noticed the monster coiling for one last strike just before its attack hit him. Zehir stumbled in mid-stride and fell forward, bruising his knees and hands as he caught himself before his face could hit the floor. He gritted his teeth in pain when the skull began to consume his magic, and he knew that it would begin feeding on his very life if he didn't shake it off soon. Kylara helped Zehir to his feet and half-carried him towards the exit as the wizard fought the monster off, forcing it back out of his head before it could devour him from the inside. A crazed howl rang through the pyramid as the monster's power fell away from Zehir, leaving a series of broken emotions and memories behind.

Blinding sunlight greeted the pair as they staggered out of the pyramid, Kylara still supporting Zehir as he tried to recover from the monster's last attack. Finally the young wizard managed to get his legs under control and walked the rest of the way to his elephant, waving Jonathan and Kalifra away as they came to help him. He'd seen the monster's intent when it invaded his mind that last time, and he had to finish the binding before it could get loose again—the fact that he now knew that it could feed off of souls and magic strengthened his resolve. Zehir's elephant trumpeted a greeting to his rider as the wizard approached, then lowered himself and offered a bent leg to help Zehir climb onto his back. "Come on, you can't be near the pyramid when I finish this," Zehir said, motioning for the group to follow him to the top of the nearest massive dune.

Once he had reached the dune's summit and ensured that everyone was well away from the pyramid, Zehir gathered the last remnants of his power and completed his spell, slamming his open palm into the sand before him to punctuate his will with action. People staggered as the ground shook, and they stared in awe as the pyramid and its courtyard began to sink beneath the desert sands. Within minutes there was nothing left of the tomb, with only the recently-stirred sand to show that there had ever been anything there at all. _If you have even the tiniest ounce of compassion left, you'll stay buried beneath the sands,_ Zehir thought as his body sagged from the overexertion required to use such a powerful spell. He had reestablished the bindings that had previously held the creature captive, and sank the pyramid to keep people like Kylara's late group leader from allowing the monster to come unbound again.

Zehir distantly heard the soft rustle of Kalifra's skirts as she came near him. "Burnout. I'd think you of all people would know better..." he lost consciousness before he could hear the rest of the healer's lecture. Looking back on the memories he'd glimpsed from the monster, Zehir could only wonder at how a creature could be twisted and broken in such a way that there was nothing left afterward but insanity and vicious malice.


End file.
